I am open minded. Is this your prefered option? What about it sitting in its own run off? Feeding from the top I was thinking of run off.
Thanks,
EP3
I tried Autopots so I could leave plants without electricity and have them watered properly. I haven't tried Blumats, so can't comment on that option.
What I can tell you though is that the autopot/coco/fabric pot combo works incredibly well. See the review in my sig if you are interested. The xl single pot trays with the fabric pots are what I went for, and they worked so well for the winter weed grow, I ordered more of them for the summer veggie grow. You can roll the "5 gal" fabric pots down to make them more like 3 gallon, which is more than enough with coco, and what I did for my weed grow last winter. If you want to try organic or living soil later, you could use the autovalve to run much larger containers. I have a couple >100 liter SIP's on the deck growing veggies this summer, and the one valve works fine for the two of them. You can also use the autovalve to run lots of smaller containers in a tray. The system is about as versatile as you can think about making it.
As to the plants sitting in their runoff, at least with the two setups I have tried, it is not an issue. The valve does not allow a new dose of nute mix/water into the tray until all the last dose is used, and this makes sure that the "flooded" root zone gets aerated between every flood cycle. I checked root growth after my grow last winter and it was perfect all the way to the bottom of the pots. Again, have a look at my review if you might be interested.
This setup grows them big, plan on at least 4 square feet per plant unless the strain is consistently smaller size.
I'm definitely not trying to say that Autopots are better than other systems you might try, but I like the system a lot, and now that I have used it a few times, I would not consider other automatic systems. This one works like a hot damn, and does it with zero dependence on electricity. OTOH, if the electricity dies, so do the fans and lights... Lots of choices these days.
